Promises in C-Minor
by Grimoire of Thorns
Summary: Kate's hand fled his, rose to her brow like a bird startled to a loftier perch. "My god, Rick," she murmured, as if stricken numb with disbelief. "I thought I knew you. You...you let me think I did." Her expression grew taut, both mystified and hurt. It wounded him to behold it, and to hear a new brand of uncertainty in her voice when she whispered, "Who are you?"
1. Mysterious Notes

**A/N: This multi-chapter will attempt to explore a couple unresolved questions, namely the origins of Rick's fascination with the macabre, and (to put it as it was posed to me) "What's the deal with that piano?" Timeline-wise this unfolds around Valentine's Day, and follows canon events up to 6x14. From there...well, we'll be veering decisively off course.**

* * *

The detective sat cross-legged at the counter in Castle's kitchen facing the windows in the living room beyond. A worn-out white thermal shirt and better-fairing blue leggings fended off the coolness. She sipped, and her toes curled with pleasure within her wool socks. Freshly brewed coffee from the mug in her hands was ably clearing the mental cobwebs. She was still debating her reception to the winter morning. The brightness of a clear sky was appealing despite the chill. Across the counter Rick's rumpled bed hair was making her fingers wiggle against the ceramic with conflicting desires to reach over and either smooth or playfully ruffle. _Decisions, decisions. _At her back, Martha was fending off her son's offer of breakfast. The diva's perfume from the previous night was detectable upon the air, heavy and a little cloying, but growing increasingly familiar in a good way.

With a small, bemused frown she gestured with her mug and asked, "Castle, why do you have a piano?"

"Why not?" he replied easily.

The detective gaze has held by the clean, almost white light gleaming from the sleek lines of the black grand. A brief smile tugged at one corner of her lips at his reply. _Spoken like a true playboy. _That was a façade time had done well to diminish. "It's Martha's," she guessed.

"Contrary to what her manner often implies," Castle returned glibly, "she doesn't own anything here beyond the confines of her room. Come to think of it, mother, how much of your room came out of your pocket?"

"Thirteen hours," Martha chimed in her smoky voice. "You'll never fully cover that bill, sonny."

"Thirteen hours of labor?" Kate mused, eying her fiancé askance. "And you call _me_ stubborn?"

"She's counting early labor," Castle replied dryly, shaking his head at his mother. "Even then I was the epitome of a courteous guest. I gave ample warning of my arrival followed by a smooth exit in a timely fashion."

"Smooth?" Martha protested mildly. "Ten pounds, six ounces, Richard. Even then you overindulged."

Rick's eyebrows shot up as a palm rose self-consciously to his soft middle.

Kate hummed with mirth and dove in for another sip of her coffee. Amidst its spreading warmth she said, "Don't sweat it, stud. I'm the only one you've gotta impress from here on, and I'm not complaining."

He shot his mother a look of smug satisfaction.

Martha tossed a dish towel in his face in mute admonishment. "It's his piano," she conceded, reminding the detective of her original, briefly forgotten query.

"I can't recall seeing anyone play it before," Kate mused aloud, regaining her previous curiosity about the item. Neither of them answered. The silence dragged on for several seconds, prompting her to look back at them. Both had their mouths slightly parted as if to reply, their gazes locked on the other. Her smile wavered to behold an unexpected level of seriousness haunting both their expressions.

"Ah," Castle finally began haltingly, "well, mother plays now and again."

"Not so much anymore," the other disagreed. Her aged hands came together in her lap with the fingers stroking at her knuckles. "These hands don't have the same finesse." There seemed to be plenty of strength in the finger of warning she pointed at her son. "Not a word from you."

But her son only offered a small, fond smile. "I miss it sometimes." The older woman looked surprised and suspicious of an impending punch-line. "What? You play beautifully."

"Bah," Martha replied with a wave of one hand. She focused on Kate and assured her, "He's sentimental this morning. I was okay, but just okay. Don't let him tell you different."

"Maybe," Castle was willing to hedge. "I'm no critic of the arts. To me it was just…nice."

The red-head offered a fleeting smile. She looked to Kate and gave a lift of her eyebrows while lowering from the stool to stand. "I'm going to go before he has a chance to spoil that." She circled the counter's end and reeled her son's head gently down to give his temple a smack of her lips. He chuckled quietly, deeply. Their gazes met and lingered. Martha's smile slowly eased away. She kissed his temple again and softly patted his other cheek.

A stealthy prickle of unease crept into Kate as the diva walked away. The gesture had begun casually enough, but once again acquired an indefinable weight uncommon to either participant. And did the actress's pace increase somewhat as she took the stairs up? Her face remained towards the wall, pointedly hidden.

But then Castle was turning back to Kate with that smirk of his in residence. Fine lines at the corners of his eyes deepened as his narrowed attention wandered her huddled figure. It was too early and she too rumpled with sleep to feel desirable. But somehow he succeeded in heightening her awareness of her body before flipping the towel over his right shoulder and lacing his fingers together, cracking his knuckles. "How about you? Breakfast?"

He was too good at distracting her. Kate felt herself waver mentally, and then capitulate to his charm. She smiled somewhat, nodding. The expression lingered as he moved confidently about the room, gathering the tools and foods necessary. It's funny: his domesticity charms her, and it's strangely arousing. He's not the first man that she's allowed close enough to be afforded the opportunity to tend to her in such fashion, but he was unquestionably the most enthusiastic. As his large hands managed the tasks she found her gaze raptly focused upon them. In the theatre of her mind, however, they were expertly engaged with…other designs in which he was equally, and rightly, confident in his ability. The chef damn well knew the effect it had on her as he dished up two plump sausages, hash-browns smothered in a layer of melted Kunik cheese, and a loaded egg-white omelet.

It was one more example of the manner in which he celebrated his claim on her. _Look what I can do, Beckett_.

"Castle," she sighed around the final forkful, "you can't keep stuffing me like this. I don't want people confusing my wedding dress for a party tent."

"It's the most important meal of the day," he chided. "Still, let's keep it to a one-man tent, hmm?"

The detective quivered briefly with humor, but found her gaze snagging on the piano in its corner. It was probably a bit late in their relationship to be questioning the item's presence now, but damned if she could help herself from investigating the mystery of it. "Have you ever thought about donating it? It's such a lovely piece. It seems a shame to have it sitting idle like that."

"It stays," Castle replied grimly. The steely certainty drew her surprised gaze back to him. A disarming smile greeted her. Was he trying to cushion the adamancy of the reply, or mutely asking for a change of subject? Before she could decide her companion leaned across the counter to kiss her cheek. No. He landed against her neck, and it was more a caress of his lips. They breezed across her skin to the shell of her right ear and pressed warmly. Amidst a scalp-prickling heightening of receptiveness she felt the gliding stroke of his tongue and the hard edge of his teeth when he nipped her lobe. "Give it an hour or so until it's just us left here." He struck the words with deliberate care, thick and smooth. "Now that you called my attention to it, I'd love to fuck you on it."

Shock and arousal dueled through the halls of her fast-churning veins. She felt the sinking of her teeth into her lower lip. An arch smile claimed her mouth as she leaned back enough to meet his gaze. Blame it on being freshly satiated with breakfast, or his rare indulgence of coarse language: haunting images unspooled in her mind of luxuriantly paced love-making—letting him assail her insides with long, sure thrusts while his warm hands banished the chill from her skin. She reached up and combed her fingers through his unruly hair. "So you _do _know how to play. That's music to my ears."


	2. At A Loss

**A/N: Erm.. so this is likely not the place some of you expected this chapter to go. My bad. I sympathize. Who wouldn't want to spend a couple thousand words with Beckett spread out on a piano like a banquet? Frankly, this is the third chapter 2 I've typed and the only version that managed to fulfill a sense of plot, let alone maintain an already tenuous T-rating. These characters man... You can't let them run wild. They only know one way to go. To bed. Or instruments. You get it. Anyway, thanks to those of you who decided to follow along. That's cool. And for your comments! Those are handy. I prefer to know if I'm sucking so as to spare the world more of it.**

* * *

Beckett was patient, but after several seconds of lingering she arched an imperious eyebrow and shot her fiancé _the look_.

It took a moment for him to catch on, and his expression seemed genuinely bewildered. "What?"

"It's not an armrest, Castle," she replied dryly, jerking her chin pointedly to the side.

"Huh? Oh!" he blurted, snatching his hand away from her ass. A rueful chuckle escaped, quickly swallowed up in a rough clearing of his throat. "Sorry." A platinum-blonde, middle-aged waitress at the diner's counter held out his change from their lunch bill. The author mantled subtly under her withering scrutiny. Her too pink lips were curled with distaste. He tipped generously without meeting her eyes again, tugged Beckett into joining a hasty retreat.

"It's not funny," he chided as they continued the drive moments later.

"You looked like your Mom walked in on you mid-hump," she lilted, laughing again. Oh god. It felt good.

Castle just winced. He scowled at the windshield.

"Oh no," Beckett mourned mid-chuckle, and pet his thigh consolingly. "That's actually happened, huh? Poor guy."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Shocking," she remarked teasingly, but with an edge of rebuke, "because you're usually an open book."

Either he failed to detect the glint of seriousness or chose to ignore it. They passed several miles in silence. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It wasn't uncomfortable, and the open countryside of Long Island was lovely even in the largely monotone shades of winter. Skeletal deciduous trees skirting the roadside gleamed with melted wetness in the midday sun. Their mantles looked almost black amidst the brightness. They were skirted by smaller conifers and dwarfed by other specimens with growth rings likely to be measured in centuries. Highway 27 from New York City to Montauk was totaled in more than mere miles and hours.

It was a special retreat for them, a world apart.

"I got busted by my folks a time or two in my younger days," Beckett offered at length, waving the proverbial olive branch.

"Yes," Castle issued somewhat sourly, "please tell me all about the other guys you've been caught boffing. It's my favorite car ride game. What has raging teenage hormones, bad boy charm, and has penetrated my fiancée?"

_Jeez. When you put it like that…gross._

"What a surly man," Kate observed with a mockery of peevishness, because she didn't really mind. Rick wasn't prone to morose behavior often, and rarely for long when it occurred. If he needed a little indulgence on her part to get through a spell of it here and there along the way, well—_through sickness and health, babe_. "You should just go ahead and tell me what's really on your mind. It'll make you feel better."

Blue eyes shifted briefly from the road to view her askance.

Kate lifted an arm to point down at the top of her head. "Detective," she supplied impishly.

Castle sighed. He started to smile, against his will it seemed, but combated the expression until it settled into one of mute consideration. His jaw shifted with intent, but he said nothing.

"You've been like this for over a week. I mean, not quite like this, but different anyway."

"I'm not hiding from you," he said, a bit too defensively.

Kate blinked at his choice of words, frowned lightly in the passenger seat. "Alright, enough," she declared, slipping by inches into interrogator mode. "I didn't say you were hiding." The driver shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "We both know what overcompensating implies." _Guilt_. She didn't have to say it.

"I," he began, but faltered. Another sigh unwound from him. "I'm just…trying to find the right words. It's frustrating, okay? I just need you to bear with me here. I'm honestly not hiding, but I guess I have been stalling."

Mild incredulous infused her reply. "_You_, Richard Castle, are having trouble finding the right words." She blinked in the face of his frustrated nodding. "I—I don't understand. What words? What are you talking about? Oh god, is this about the wedding? We have to postpone after all?"

"No," he soothed. "It's nothing like that. And not to split hairs, but _you're_ the one who's been talking about it. Asking about it."

A light of realization bloomed in her mind. "Oh shit—is that about your piano? The timeline fits."

"Not—no," Castle answered haltingly. "I mean yes. That too." Kate just stared, blinking with bemusement. He noticed in the midst of another sideways glance and growled softly, twisting the steering wheel in his hands until the leather creaked from the abuse. "I'm referring to the past," he finally clarified in a calmer tone.

"We've had conservations along those lines before," Beckett appraised shrewdly. "You never got riled up like this. You have something specific in mind."

"I've never discussed…this."

Kate started to reply, but screeched to a halt. Hesitantly, tentatively, she asked, "W-what do you mean 'never'?"

"Just what I said."

"Never? Not with Alexis or your mother?"

"Mother knows. She," Rick paused, stared at her for a silent beat. "She can't talk about it. Just the once; that was all she could bear." _Oh shit. _Her pulse-rate was jumping in her veins as if it suddenly wanted out. _What have I gotten us into?_ "That's always suited me fine," her companion continued. "Nothing I said then seemed to change her way of thinking any. I guess I can't blame her. As a parent, I understand only too well now."

"Uh," she said, trying to sort the confusion from her sudden misgivings. "You're not making sense."

"I know, damn it. I told you I don't know the words. Listen, we're almost there now. I'd rather wait."

"I definitely don't," she blurted. God no—let the unknown ax fall if was going to. It was imperative to make it happen as quickly as possible. The resulting damage couldn't be assessed until it did.

"This is hard enough without focusing on the road too."

"Oh god," Kate groaned, pressing her fists to her stomach. "This is going to be bad, isn't it?"

Man. The look he gave her in reply…

She'd never seen him reveal anything to match it, and so had no basis for comparison. But in anyone else she'd have called it knowledge, and the sad expectation of some unknown inevitability. Towards the end of his time on the force Mike Royce had worn a frightfully similar expression during next-of-kin notifications. He'd known what was coming from almost two decades on the job. It still hurt, but he was somehow set apart from it too. Indefinably untouchable by virtue of terrible experience. That was one of the things she'd been drawn too—the way he could do the job right without letting all the ugliness grind him down the way others had. She was too young then to understand that he'd simply been ground down in a different fashion.

"Just get us there," she murmured dully.

Castle looked scared. That frightened her in turn.

A decisive unease had perforated their comfortable silence. Now the lack in the sedan hung like a pall in the air, or a funerary shroud. It was almost suffocating. Kate reached for the radio, but hesitated upon the knob and let it be. This was going to be bad. She didn't want to remember it with a goddamn soundtrack. With her luck it would be the perfect wedding song pouring out of the speakers, forever marred by this tense ride through the hamlet of Montauk. Precious little evidence of life was there to distract her. A few pick-up trucks were moving about, grills armed with yellow plows. Fewer still pedestrians revealed themselves.

She and her partner passed through the more populated sections with hardly a blip to distinguish their arrival or departure. With a glance into the side mirror, Kate asked, "Where're we going?"

Castle's voice sounded different, as of a man weary to the point of exhaustion. "Montauk Point."

"It's probably closed." _Please God let it be._ _No, don't. Fuck—I don't even know which to pray for_.

"It'll be open," he replied succinctly.

And it was. Heaven help her.

What did Castle do? Or did something happen _to_ him? It has to be the latter if Martha still feels raw about it. It has to be. He…got lost in all these woods or something, almost died. That's bad. It could be that.

"It was summer then," Castle said quietly. "A hot one by New England standards."

"We don't have to do this," Kate heard herself protest. _Damn._ The detective lifted a supplicating hand in the air even as she hung her head briefly. "Shit. Forget I said that." Her mother would be appalled. Hiding from the truth was not the way of Beckett women.

"Tell me to stop anytime," Rick invited, but it sounded disconcertingly like pleading. "I don't need to talk about this, Kate. I just can't hide it either. Not this time—with you." Secrets. Meredith's lamented observations about her marriage to Rick were right; he'd kept her at a distance. "We're getting closer to the day, and it's been like a chain wrapped around my chest, pulling tighter link by link." The words reminded her of Detective Raglan in the coffee shop. She winced hard. Castle didn't seem to make the connection, continuing, "And then you…asked. Close enough anyway. I knew it was time to bring you here."

"This where the bodies are buried?" she asked acidly, getting angry now. Secrets. Kate thought they were well and truly past this hurdle. It was hypocritical, but she couldn't help being outraged. Damn him.

To her horror his features went bloodless before her very eyes. He tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace. "Not anymore," he answered hollowly. The coldness which swept in through his opening car door seemed to go right into her core. Like someone's lips hovering before a candle flame before snuffing it decisively out.


	3. The Boy upon the Beach

The parking area at Montauk Light was a sprawling oval of blacktop within the surrounding forest. It was recently plowed, but Rick's car was the sole occupant. Looking back at it from the entrance off Montauk Highway, Kate would have said the automobile seemed a bit forlorn amidst the emptiness. A glance ahead revealed her husband-to-be striding towards the crosswalk, similarly solitary.

_Well you wouldn't be if you'd wait up_, she beamed to him mentally.

She'd gotten him pretty worked up with her reaction to his admission of having previously undisclosed baggage. Damn, damn, damn. How could she not, given what he'd been saying? Though her concerns about what was coming had not diminished, logic and reason had returned in the brief interim, reminding her that _he_ was afraid too. He needed her to be solid for him, at least for a little while. So the detective had been given an allotted freak-out moment. Okay. Now back to business.

Kate jogged after her partner, exhaling plumes of vapor. Smooth-fit jeans lend her lower half a great silhouette. As good as flypaper for eliciting her partner's wayward hands to her backside apparently, but versus winter…fail. Her calf-length boots were equipped with modest heels, easier to work with by far.

That was small comfort from on her back.

Blinking hazel eyes stared up into the sky. The fall was so sudden it hadn't even hurt. _Um_. She huffed, and then giggled briefly. _Even on the worst days… _Rick appeared into view above her. His obvious concerned did little to dissuade the fit. He pursed his lips and flicked an eyebrow as she quivered in the snow, trying to smother mirth fueled by embarrassment.

_You're mental_, his look declared, but a smile flitted across the curves of his mouth. "I never thought I'd see the day, Beckett."

"Don't look at me," she protested mildly. "I'm disgustingly horizontal."

A boyish grin broke out of his dour mood. The depth of his chuckle resonated against her skin when he reached down for her. Kate circled his neck with her arms, even helping some as he hoisted her upright.

"Are you okay?" Rick posed as they came apart. The way his blue eyes drifted to one side suggested the question wasn't as simple as it might have appeared to a casual observer.

"Better now," she replied firmly, her gaze unwavering. "I just stumbled a bit is all."

"Everyone stumbles," he supplied with a hesitant, small smile. His attention came home to her.

"Not everyone has someone to help them up, or to hold onto so they don't fall in the first place." Less subtle, that, but it did the job. She curled an arm into the crook of his right one when he offered it. They set out into the snow again together. "Can I ask though…did it ever occur to you to tell me this before now?"

"Of course," Castle returned forcefully. His eyebrows lifted, followed ruefully by one corner of his mouth. "Of course it did," he repeated more calmly. "Believe it or not I've learned my lesson with holding back. You have every right to be upset with me now. I know that. But this was never a secret I meant to keep from you specifically, Kate. I've kept it from the world in general and for most of my life. There are other people involved. It's not just my story to tell even if I wanted to, which I don't. I never did."

"But you are now," she observed when he hesitated to continue.

"Yes," he answered slowly, "but not because I want to."

Kate frowned to take in the apologetic hunching of his shoulders and the contrasting determination set into his clenched jaw. "Did someone hurt you, Rick?" Even to her ears that came out laced with an electric undercurrent of protective anger. Castle paused in their walk to face her more completely. His gloved hands burrowed into the pockets of his navy p-coat. _Closing off on me again_, she mused, though he didn't seem aware of it this time. "Sorry. Tell it your way," the detective tried from a different angle. "You said it was summer."

"A hot one," he murmured, his expression slowly becoming distant. The author fell silent for a time, then shook himself and focused on her again. "Is it okay to tell you this way—kind of like it's a story? Somehow it feels easier, or at least, ah, more appropriate."

"More appropriate?"

Rick moistened his lips and sent his gaze into the snow between their feet. But his voice was steady and smooth, matter-of-fact. "I haven't been Richard Rodgers for a long time, Kate. He might as well be a fictional character for all I remember of him."

"Tell it however you need to. I'm just glad you're doing it, Rick; letting me in. I can see it's not easy."

"No more difficult than it was for you to do the same. But you've been _in_ for longer than you know. This is simply an event that occurred to some people a long time ago. It's not me. I just…happened to be there. What we've built together over these past several years—_that's_ me. My daughter, mother, and my work," he listed with obvious agitation, "both with you at the precinct and in my writing. That's where you find me." The last five words were thrust out in more of a growl. "Not in these godforsaken woods!"

A trickle of fear crept right down her spine. She didn't ask, couldn't ask: _Who are you trying to convince?_

His fingers twitched to feel hers entwine among them, but he didn't pull away. Instead he nodded once as if in answer to some unspoken question and turned to lead her across the deserted street. A snow-laden red pick-up was parked outside of the lighthouse in the distance. The side buildings to their right and ahead on the left were both closed up, their windows black in lieu of occupancy. She didn't know their function, and Castle offered no explanation. In fact he veered left away from the tourist attraction to a side road leading back into the woods. Distant, but audible, the ocean's timeless cadence broke steadily upon the rocky shore. If her geography was correct this was the dirt road that led down to Montauk Point.

"Talk to me," she prodded gently.

Castle's head lifted and turned towards her. "Right," he murmured. "Summer. I was here. I…_he_ rode his bike here from town. It's not a new one like some of the other kids have, but he likes it anyway."

"You, uh, he made a long trip," she inserted softly when her partner stalled.

"Yes," the other agreed with a humorless smile. "The boy came to see about a girl."

Kate couldn't help a brief pursing of her lips.

Rick's eyes narrowed somewhat with affection to behold it. "He was just a boy, Kate, and she was sixteen. Laura. She was his babysitter, but the young man thought…"

"That she liked him?"

The author tilted his head slightly to one side in a hedging gesture. "Not in a romantic sense. He's still teetering on the phase where girls and cooties are mutually inclusive. But Laura is different somehow. She's so vibrant in the ways she engages him," his brow creases slightly, and his lips quiver at the corners of his mouth with a smile that doesn't emerge. "It's as if he brought her similar joy. The young woman sets him next to her at the piano and they play together. With wide eyes, she tells him he's a prodigy. Such a designation means nothing to Richard, except that it somehow makes her happy. They share a personal connection he hasn't found elsewhere, not for lack of friends or loved ones, but simply because the fact is: some people are…special together."

A fragile smile hovered at Beckett's lips.

The snow grew deeper as they went. No plow had been driven along this route. Only the overhanging boughs of the bordering trees spared them the additional inches that would otherwise be hampering their progress. Still, the author paused to frown critically down at her jeans. The hems were already dark with moisture.

Goodness. He made her ache sometimes. Thinking of her comfort at such a time? "I'm okay for now," she assured. "Keep going."

Castle hesitated, but complied. "One summer night Richard hears her talking on the phone to someone about going to the point later. He doesn't understand the implications involved, or comprehend the difference in the way she smiles during the conversation. At that time this place is used as a lover's lane."

"Prime real-estate," Beckett observed. "The murmur of the ocean, the seclusion of the trees. No lights from town to dampen the stars, and the lighthouse nearby. _Très romantique_."

Her companion nodded once, but his expression disagreed. He looked ill.

Kate gave his hand a small squeeze.

"It was very late. A weeknight. A Wednesday." The uncharacteristic cadence of his speech was strangely disquieting. Her companion's voice is deep in the relative silence around them. It seemed to be the only sound in the world. "As he rode over the bumps in the dirt road the young man didn't encounter anyone coming or going."

"You snuck out to follow her?"

Castle's eyes slid to hers and his lips curved in a small, sad smile.

"Oh damn," the dark-haired woman murmured. "Martha wasn't home with you that night, was she?"

"She was supposed to be. And I'm sure she meant to. You have to understand: acting is like any business. It's all in who you know, but to a greater degree than normal. Where we might see her going to parties and having fun; to her the same function is akin to a job interview. We effectively survived on her ability to, well, carouse."

"I'm not condemning," Kate supplied evenly. "Or condoning."

"Good," he said, surprising her with a hint of coolness in his tone. "You're not equipped with enough knowledge or personal experience for either where she's concerned." She wasn't put off by him making the point. Indeed, the protectiveness of behalf of his loved ones is endearing. As a member of that short list, she finds herself briefly wondering whether or not he's had occasion to rise up in her defense in similar fashion.

Castle reeled her back to the present when he continued. "I remember hearing the music first." He didn't seem to realize making the change to first person. Kate didn't stop him. In contrast to the sharpness of her focus he seemed to be growing distant again. "I slowed down when I heard it, stopped in the road just a little ways down from where we stand now." His head tilted somewhat as if perched to listen. Beckett shivered at his side, and not solely from the cold, but her companion didn't notice. "It's John Denver. Annie's Song."

That was a hit from 1974. Summer. He would've been five years old.

_Oh fuck_.

Dread _swelled_ to renewed life within her chest. The first time she'd asked about his fascination with murder he'd said…what. Right: that story about Castle finding a dead boy on the beach when he was five years old. At the time he'd passed it off as fiction. And she…she had never questioned the matter again.

Richard had gone quiet. It went on for a full minute before Kate gently stroked his arm with her free hand.

It didn't rouse him out of his focus, but he spoke. "The science obviously wasn't as good back then." Part of her wanted to lift her fingertips to his lips. _God, please don't say what I think you're going to. _"People tell me he had already killed her by the time I arrived." Kate's mouth opened in mute, shocked protest even as her blood ran cold. "But I...I've always wondered if that was true. It would be a very easy lie to tell a little boy."

"The boy on the beach," Kate rasped in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. "In the b-blood that hadn't yet washed away."

Castle turned to face her, his expression unreadable. That was so much worse than grief would have been. "So you remember. Yes…that was me. Eventually."

* * *

**A/N: There're still a lot of unanswered questions, I know. This is only the first part of their conversation.**


	4. Buried Truth

Kate Beckett wasn't prone to tears, and she wasn't crying now. It wouldn't have shamed her to do so. What elicited the moisture in her eyes were anger and a deep whirling of regret. _My god_. She should have pressed him more at the time, pushed for answers. How could she have known? There was never any indication…

He was a chameleon; a collage of substance hiding in plain sight via playboy persona. And for too long she'd bought into it just like everyone else. Christ. What kind of detective was she? _Not detective_, her imagined Lanie-voice supplied. _Woman. And you were the kind afraid to risk getting too close.  
_

Castle's voice intruded; a strangely soothing sound among her inner turmoil. "Beckett?"

Kate's hand fled his, rose to her brow like a bird startled to a loftier perch. "My god, Rick," she murmured, numb with disbelief. "I thought I knew you. You...you let me think I did." Her expression grew taut, both mystified and hurt. An unfamiliar brand of uncertainty stole into her voice, like a flavor upon her tongue that was alien until now. "Who are you?" she whispered.

"You know," he replies grimly, and he looks so damned certain, far more than she is of herself at the moment.

"Do I?" Beckett lifted the appendage at her forehead to present it in a forestalling gesture. "Wait. God. I'm so sorry. This isn't about me. I'm not trying to make it be. I'm just... Don't stop talking."

"It's not a conversation we need to get through all in one—

"Don't. Stop." She hit the words hard, nearly chomping them to bits.

The dip of the sun into the early afternoon poured its light into the blue eyes regarding her. So clear—they were so clear and beautiful, but also suddenly unfamiliar. "The killer was a local senior—as in high-school. He came from a family with money. So did the victims though. No one tried to use their influence to sweep it under the rug," he added soberly. "But it was kept within the local community as much as possible. It was a different time."

Kate's blistering tone should have melted the snow. "I didn't ask you for a fucking summary."

Castle didn't flinch. On the contrary, his expression was blank. That might work with someone who hadn't spent years learning the emotional attachments guiding this gesture or that tone of voice. A sudden lack was just as revealing to her. The very distance he strove to create between himself and that summer night was one more detail that made it clear the opposite was true. "What else do you want to know?"

"What do I want to _know_? What happened to you!' she all but shrieked.

The silence that fell in the wake was profound.

When his jaw shifted in its set and his head lowered some the glare he leveled on her was so fierce that Kate fell back a pace involuntarily. It's easy to forget that he's a big man, and though somewhat softened by luxury, still a decisive force to be reckoned with. She's been scared for him, and with him, but very rarely _of_ him. Yet in his unbridled anger her partner unknowingly becomes a vision of doom. "Save your pity for the victims," he hissed with pure venom. "There were two more that night because I couldn't stop him here. Two more dead girls. Four total. He buried them on the beach, naked, face-down."

Beckett was speechless.

It is horribly fascinating to watch him spool up all of that anger and dark intensity and draw it back behind his walls. Soon it's gone even to her intimate perception of him. The voice she hears bewilders her; it's strong, cold, and authoritative. "You'll forgive me if I don't dwell on myself."

So much of their past was rolling through Kate's mind now. It spun by like a movie reel: fast, vivid, and uncontrollable. Rick's shifting from one school to the next—had his past caught up to him somehow? The adoption of his superfluous demeanor—a personality that shines brightly enough can be blinding to people who might otherwise attempt to look too closely. His relationships with women—who would dare get so close to someone again? Even Jerry Tyson—_oh God_. The violent animosity Rick bore towards that serial killer shone so much clearer now.

Beckett heard herself stammering. "I—I…"

"You don't have to say anything," Castle issued quietly. Her knees almost buckled when his hand nestled between the folds of her coat and into place against her left side. The feel of his thumb fanning smoothly out over her hip is so electrifying that it draws her jaw down into a useless, wordless gape.

Kate flinched away from him again, stunned by the intensity. A shaky finger pointed into the air between them. "Gimme a sec," the woman husks, and bent to rest her hands upon her knees, sucking in a deep draught of oxygen. "I'm not upset with you," she clarified. "Just let me…process."

Crazy, but her body was reacting to the situation as if this were another near-miss. Brushes with death on their cases these days elicit an almost unquenchable ardor from both of them. There's so much more to lose now, and such a divine manner of celebrating their endurance when tested by finality.

"I can't believe you kept this from me," Kate finally managed. She was relieved to hear her tone matched her feelings on the matter—lacking accusation. The words had actually come out wrong. What she meant was: _Of all people you could tell this too—wouldn't I have been the most predisposed to understand this kind of pain_?

Thankfully, he seemed to interpret her meaning without the clarification. "Well, in all fairness, you tend to put my mind…elsewhere. You always have." She looked up between tumbled locks of her dark hair in time to catch the flicker of a smile at one corner of his mouth. "Honestly, Kate, it's a relief. You're my oasis."

"So you do think about it." Her tone made it a question.

"Sometimes," Castle replied slowly, as if reconsidering while he spoke. "But I'm referring more to…I don't know. The event itself doesn't haunt me so much. I don't know why. But there is a feeling that comes over me now and again, a sense of…impending disaster. Who was that state psychiatrist that helped us out with Morlock on that vampire case? Dr. Holloway. He'd probably tell you I've got abandonment issues. Maybe so, but to me it's justifiable. Excluding my mother, I've lost connection with anyone and everyone who knows what happened that night. People slowly disappeared around me. Not because they blamed me." His lips curled into a silent sneer while stare sightlessly at the trees to their right. "Hell, they called me a hero, because without me as a witness the murders might've never been solved. Some hero," he concluded bitterly. "All I managed to do was to wash up on the shore later that morning a little more alive than dead."

_Five years old_. "Oh, babe—

"Don't," he snarled, slipping eerily closer towards looming again. His gaze slid right to regard her peripherally; cutting blades of blue. "I don't blame myself for what the killer did, Beckett, only for what I couldn't, and it's not your place to dissuade me. It's no one's place. None of you were there."

The detective echoed his small, sad smile from earlier. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

"I know," her fiancé murmured in acquiescence, and dropped his gaze to the snowy ground. "I know you get it—as much as anyone else in my life could hope to. That's part of why I decided to bring you here. I'm sorry it took so long."

"There's so much you're leaving out," she couldn't help to gently protest.

Rick didn't flash another glimpse of that deep well of anger. Instead he sighed mutely with a plume of frosty vapor. "What does it matter now? I survived."

"It matters because I love you, Rick. I want to know every scar, inside and out."

"Is this where you point out how hypocritical of me it would be to say no? After how much of yourself you've shared with me over the years?"

Beckett drifted back to his side and reached for both his hands. The writer didn't shy away. "No, Rick, but that _is_ my point. I told you all of that because I wanted you to know, and more importantly because _you_ wanted to know. It's nice when someone really looks at us, when they care enough to try in spite of resistance."

"Maybe I was just morbidly curious."

Kate smiled briefly and pointedly wiggled her left hand ring finger against his palm. "Maybe not."

"That's damning evidence," he agreed with the ghost of a smile. His grasp on her shifted to let his thumb stroke across the engagement band and the presence of the stone, hidden though it was between both their pairs of gloves. Even then, however, the lighter aspect of him shone from beneath a fearful furrowing of his brow.

"I'm not going anywhere," Beckett told him sternly. "You don't have to carry anything alone anymore. Thank God neither do I."

Castle shook his head and sighed quietly again. His forehead lowered to rest lightly against hers and simply by the set of his eyes on hers she read the message of capitulation. "Is there nothing I wouldn't give you?" he wondered aloud.

She kissed him. He moved against her lips, stroking hers with his, prolonging even that brief connection for another half a second. There was nothing unfamiliar about how that felt. Lowering to a natural stance, she took a breath and squeezed his hands, "Ready?"

Castle turned slightly. Beckett followed his stare to the bend in the road ahead, shortly after which awaited the termination of the tree line and an open, icy shore—where the bodies had been buried. Waves broke there, diminutive peals of thunder that gave way to the sibilant hiss of sea foam dissipating on the sand. It whispered to them through the concealing fauna like a chorus of beckoning voices.

"No," he answered at length. "But there's no turning back for us now."

* * *

**A/N: Well. Quite a productive weekend so far, hmm? Clearly we're still not quite done with Castle's recounting of events, but this seemed a natural place to pause. I'd like to welcome any newcomers. Also, my thanks again for sharing your impressions so far, either by leaving a quick note, designating this as a favorite, or deciding to follow the tale. Your attention alone is a damn fine thing.**


	5. Alone and Adrift

The ice and snow is denied purchase some yards from the restless shore. Tufts of grass and rocks are laid bare along the delimitation between winter's pallor and the purview of Mother Ocean. Standing where those two forces clash—forces nearly as old as time—is strangely unsettling amidst present circumstances. This is not an everyday sight to her. It feels like they've stumbled upon an impression of God's footprint.

_Or _m_aybe not God, all things considered._

"Low tide," Kate observes aloud. She immediately wishes she hadn't. The inane statement only emphasizes what she doesn't know to say—how unfamiliar this territory is. The detective is the one with an oversized anchor, and the writer is her indefatigable buoy. She's more than prepared to rotate positions on his behalf, but in these initial minutes the prospect looms as large as the sun-spangled sea. Words tumble from her brain to her guts where they twist apprehensively: _How do I do this?_

"You belong here," Castle says. Turning at the waist reveals him studying her profile through his iPhone some yards distant. A press of his thumb mutely announces the capture of a stolen moment. His smile is subdued, but alive. "Right there," he elaborates, "with the wind in your hair and the waves coming in at your feet, prostrating themselves before an untamed goddess."

A lopsided smile claims her unexpectedly. Sometimes his words are a tickling poke in the ribs, on occasion a supportive hand at her back. Still others it's more like he's fucking her with them, which is obscene. And she is obscenely receptive. "Be glad I'm not," Kate submits wryly. "You'd be one drenched sap."

Castle didn't laugh, but his smile tightened at the corners of his mouth. "Galene then." He pronounces it: _guy-leen_, an exotic word of unknown origin. "That's probably a more appropriate comparison."

"What's that?"

"She's one of the Nereid from Greek mythology."

Sea nymphs. In stories they aided sailors imperiled by violent storms. Kate's smile wavers, because the parallel is discomfortingly appropriate—to him more than her. It designates her as a savior, but she's thirty-five years too late. She is too small a vessel to contain how much she wishes that were not the case.

The departure of her amusement is like a thrown switch. Rick's smile leaves too and seems to take the light from his eyes along with it. "His name was Llewellyn." Just speaking it seems to banish some of the color from his face. "I knew it was him when I followed the music around the bend in the road. It was coming from his car: a 1969 Mustang Boss 429. He was the only one in town who owned one at the time, you see."

"You own one of those," she blurts in surprise. It's in the garage at his beach house. With a small twinge of embarrassment she realizes that some part of her suspected it was a more recent purchase, something he'd obtained with her in mind after becoming aware of her interest in muscle cars.

His next words crush that theory into dust: "Not just any one of those."

Beckett stares at him for a small eternity, stricken by the implications. She wants to scream at him. Her throat aches with the effort of holding it in. _Why? Why the fuck would you do that to yourself?_ Instead she sucks down a breath and pushes it out slowly, shakily. "Can you…explain that for me?"

"No," he replies hoarsely. _It doesn't make sense even to you, does it?_ As if he'd heard the question, Rick meets her eyes and asks, "Can you?" There was such hunger to know etched into those rugged features. The woman ached to provide what he sought.

Except…oh damn. Maybe she could.

"I know," she began hesitantly, wanting so badly for the words to be right, "that when the pain of Mom's murder was fresh, I was drowning in it. I'd have grabbed onto anything to keep myself afloat." She touched at the place between her breasts where the chain which bore her mother's ring habitually rests. "Dad gave me this. Obviously. It's not something I could have ever taken. It's strange," she continued softly. "Until now I never thought about whether he'd known what he was really giving me at the time."

"A lifeline."

"Yeah." She sighed, frowned. "Of course he knew." A hesitant amusement unexpectedly awoke. "Before it all, he often fell back on her in times of need. Whenever my emotions were running high about a boy or some kind of drama he'd get this antsy look about him and say, 'Let's go see what your Mom thinks about that, Katie.'"

A rumbling chuckle eased out of her companion. "Would that I could've done the same."

Beckett's lips curved, but quickly straightened to realize she'd strayed into talking about herself again. Yet her partner seemed to have profited from the comparison. The haunted gape of his eyes had returned to normal width. The author seems to rally himself even as she watches, pulling together all the jagged pieces. That kind of strength is not something she would have imagined beyond her fiancé's capabilities.

Seeing it happen though…

If Kate let herself go to him now she'd stop him. Sure as hell. And after witnessing the cost thus far she doubted another day would dawn in which she could ask him to pick up the story again. The woman remained very still, crossed her arms beneath her breasts. Her gloves clench into tight fists.

At length Castle continued. "When I came around the bend the mustang was parked right at the end of the road, facing the ocean. It was beautiful," he adds, so quietly that she strains to hear clearly. "It looked like a big cat crouched in the dark, its taillights glowing red. The passenger door was open."

"He saw you?" Beckett asked, hoping to ease him along in the telling a little.

"Not right away. He was down on the beach. Digging. I couldn't see him from where I was. For the life of me I can't recall now what I was thinking at the time. But I wasn't afraid. Llewellyn was _that_ guy, the one the rest of us wanted to be. He was popular, smart, athletic, but also good humored. With his attributes he could've been a jerk or a trouble-maker and probably gotten away it. But he didn't. He was friendly to jocks and geeks alike." Castle's eyebrows lifted and fell; he shook his head once. "It's a cliche we've heard so many times, but it's true: everyone liked him."

_Sounds familiar._

Beckett watched her partner unblinkingly, waiting for a sidelong glance or half-hearted smile. Something. Anything. But if the author was aware of the parallels between himself and the description he'd just given there was no indication. Words tumbled in her mind again, too many possibilities. She chose, "What changed?"

"Nothing," Rick answered. His expression hardens. "The veil was pulled away from the monster's face—nothing more."

"What do you mean?"

"Llewellyn may not have been the one to physically initiate trouble, but it was never far behind him. Montauk was a small community even then, but with a disproportionate amount of strife among its residents. No one made the connection because…he was the way he was. But in the aftermath, with the illusions dispelled, people talked. They began to realize that a lot of the disparagement between people, families, and even some businesses had begun or were enflamed by a comment Llewellyn had made or something he claimed to have seen. A long series of small lies," Castle murmured tonelessly, "that slowly metastasized and turned neighbor against neighbor. He was always killing us. But by inches—millimeters even—so we never understood it was happening."

"Something must have changed," Beckett insisted gently, "for him to reveal himself that night."

"Oh. Yes, in that respect there was a change. Graduation—or at least that's my theory. There was never any proof concerning that detail one way or the other. I'm not sure anyone was even interested in his motive at the time. Not that I blame them considering his crimes."

Kate frowned in bemusement, but almost immediately stiffened with realization. "Oh shit."

Castle studied her intently from across the sand. "You see it too."

"People would have been expecting him to leave Montauk."

"For college or whatever," Rick inserted.

The sick logic of it made Beckett shiver even as her blood hummed with the dark thrill of achieving some form of conclusion. "A self-driven young man like that; it'd be weird if he didn't. But if he left—

"He would've had to give up his sandbox and all his favorite toys."

"Christ," the detective hissed softly. Then growled, "The pathetic little bastard."

"It is pathetic," Castle agreed. "In more ways than one." Something about the way he said it drew her gaze. "I'm not sympathizing," he growled deeply. The writer went rigid while saying so, bolstering the legitimacy of the claim. "But I can see how the rest of us exacerbated the problem. We helped build Llewellyn up into something he wasn't, put him on a pedestal to which he had no rightful claim. If we had been really looking at him instead of gazing admiringly, maybe those girls would still be alive."

"Rick, that's not fair."

"No," he seethed in reply. "No, it isn't." Anger coils in his broad shoulders and the tautness of the fists at his sides. Kate doesn't take a step back this time. _No more distance between us_._ Not even an inch._

The dark-haired woman stopped herself from driving the heel of a palm into her forehead. She cursed herself mentally for nearly missing it. Maybe part of Castle did hold the town at large accountable. But his anger wasn't directed at the other citizens of Montauk. It was pointed inward at himself. He said _we_. But he meant _I_.

Before she could chastise him the author sighed and strode to the shore at her left side, facing the ocean. "I know how that sounds," he assured tiredly. "It's not really something I carry, Beckett. It's just…"

"It's just frustrating to look back and know you could've done something," she concluded. "If only you'd known."

"Yeah," he mused with a small, humorless smile. "If only."

Kate steeled herself and reached to grasp lightly around his right forearm. The familiar solidity of him, the scents of him detectable upon the air; it's all a strange juxtaposition to this daunting newness. The fine hairs upon the nape of her neck arch to attention from the sheer rightness of their contact. "Tell me the rest," she murmured, stroking down to his hand and grasping it. "My poor toes can't take anymore getting sidetracked."

Her fiancé's broad shoulders stirred with a glimmer of mirth that didn't reach his solemn expression. "I laid my bike down and went to the car. It was empty. The dome light was on from the passenger door being ajar." His chest pressed lightly into her arm with the expansion of a deep breath. "I remember the smell of the black leather interior. Bucket seats. Gleaming panels. Annie's Song coming through the speakers." John Denver would probably never strike her the same way again. "The car looked so mysterious and…adult. I mean: something I knew even then was beyond my ability to wield or fully appreciate."

Kate didn't prod him along again, didn't even think to. She was as good as lost with him in the memory.

"I heard something else too though: a strange and rhythmic rasping sound I couldn't place."

"A shovel," she voiced, hardly aware of doing so, "hissing against the sand as he digs."

"He was half in the headlights, half in the dark on the shore. The first grave was already a few hours old. I arrived just as he was completing the second—Laura's."

"He killed and buried them one at a time?" she asked, but even doing so, remained entrenched within the mental image he had painted with his words.

"Judging by the extensive trauma on the first victim, police assume it was unplanned; a complete loss of all self-control and moral inhibition. But once he'd taken that plunge, they theorized, he couldn't stop himself. So he did it again. And again. And again." Beckett pursed her lips into a firm line. "I think they're close to the truth, if not wholly correct. I saw him. On the beach." She unconsciously clasped his arm again with her free hand. "I saw him and he saw me at the exact same time."

"Did I notice something different about him?" Castle asked aloud. Soft gasps announced his breathing, sharp little tugs of oxygen. The detective fell into a similar pattern, felt her heartbeat quickening. "I don't know how. It was dark. The bodies were buried. How could I just know? But he saw me," her companion continued, speaking more quickly as well now, "and out of the sand he came—like some crazed jack in the box sprung from his cube. He didn't say anything. Me neither. We just looked and then we acted. And I ran," he gasped softly, blue eyes glazed and sightless upon the ocean. "Forgot about my bike, or the car, or anything. I wish I'd _said _something," he growled, clenching his hands into fists. Kate wasn't even aware enough to wince from the pressure of his grip. "I didn't even ask about Laura. Gone into her sandy tomb. I didn't—" he jerked, shoulders heaving with a spasm of perfectly soundless grief. A funneled version of his baritone escaped, tight and laced with emotion. "I didn't even _think_ about her, Katie." Hearing that version of her name at such a time ripped into her heart like a goddamn meat hook. She flinched hard, felt droplets of wetness graze her cheeks on the way to the sand. The writer's eyes were glossed with a similar sheen, but no tears fell, as if they weren't enough to do the job. "I didn't even call out for her.

"I don't…remember," her partner continued hesitantly, more rasped. "It's a blur. Suddenly we were back near the lighthouse, running around the base of it." Castle's brow furrowed. "What was I doing there? I wish I'd… But that's where we were, and I remember running, and thinking that I would never see home again. Never see Mom again. I was trapped in some bizarre loop where Llewellyn and I were going to be stuck forever. Just…circling that red and white tower too winded to call for help, or Mom, or Laura. I don't—I don't know why I thought that."

Kate sniffed wetly, quietly, dabbed at her nose with her sleeve.

Castle's attention shifted from the ocean to her. A small, humorless smile graced the contours of his mouth. The author reached into his inner coat pocket with his free hand and withdrew a white handkerchief. _Of course you would have one._ He pressed lightly at her cheeks with one silken corner, ascended a bit to graze the skin under her eyes. Then he proffered it mutely for her acceptance.

Kate didn't have the words, just grasped it and leaned in until her head bumped lightly into his chest. The firmness of his arms rising to surround her was so…good. But she did it for him, wanting something firm and fixed to anchor him while being tossed along the harrowing current of recollection.

"He caught me. I'm honestly not sure how long it took—maybe just a couple laps. 'Don't be afraid, Richie.' That's what he said. 'Don't be afraid. Laura's waiting for you. We're all born in blood, Richie—our mama's blood. Why wouldn't we leave this world just as drenched in it?'" He shivered against her and she quaked too, as if in pure sympathy. "I saw him, Kate. But not the young man I'd assumed to know. He was gone as if he'd never been." Silence stretched itself out between them. Part of her didn't want it to end. "There wasn't time to say anything even if I could have thought of the words. He threw me over the edge of the hill. It's was a steeper slope back then, and he was strong. I landed on the rocks all the way at the bottom. I hit my head and..."

Kate eased back fractionally while remaining in the corral of his arms, eye-to-eye but for the height discrepancy. She reached up with one hand to trace the scar over his left eyebrow. "Here."

Castle blinked, staring blankly before finally asking with mild surprise, "How did you know?"

"I asked Lanie about it once." There was no reason to blush about her interest on the matter now. "She said it looked like the result of impact trauma."

"Perceptive as usual," he agreed succinctly.

"Jesus," she whispered. The detective curled a hand at the base of his skull and pulled him down, kissed the lasting stamp of old violence. He withdrew too soon for her liking to match stares again. She said, "But here you are. Did Llewellyn make a mistake, or not have the heart to finish it?"

Castle's jaw shifted, but he failed to reply.

"You don't remember?"

"I do. I remember it all very well from that point forward. I didn't black out from the fall. I just…floated out to sea. I could see him standing there at the top of the hill, watching me go."

Kate tilted her head and looked to the shore at her right. "The waves didn't—

"Smash me on the rocks? Maybe at first…I'm not sure. But it's deep water around this little notch of the island—the current pulls with more insistence. That's why you aren't seeing any driftwood or the like. Go a few hundred yards in either direction from here and it's another matter."

She frowned and looked back to him. "I don't understand. Wasn't that a lucky break for you?"

Castle moistened his lips in consideration, seeming hesitant before continuing. "It was, but it shouldn't have been. That's why he didn't come down to finish it. I should've been carried halfway around the island, long drowned by the time the current spilled me onto the shores along the southern beaches. He knew that."

"Why..." she stopped, couldn't finish it.

He did. "Why wasn't I? I don't know. None of the local guys could explain it either, and they live half their lives out there on their boats."

The world kept moving, but the woman was very still in his arms. "And you were awake for it all?"

Richard nodded, his eyes straying hers. From an angled perspective she could see a resurfacing gleam in his gaze. It made her fingers curl into his coat at his back. "I can't…I don't want to talk about that part. I'm sorry. I just can't."

"Drifting was worse than…the stuff before?"

"Before I was driven by raw instinct. I drifted for hours. There was so much," he paused, leaving the sentence undone. Blue eyes shifted to similar, deeper hued ocean. "There's nothing out there, Kate. Nothing but time. I spent it thinking about Laura—what I should've done differently. About surviving Llewellyn only to die in the sea where no one would ever find me. No one would ever know what happened to her."

"Oh, Castle," she breathed. He'd been a boy, violently stripped of innocence. No one should become aware of mortality in such a fashion.

"Don't," he warned grimly, but without the same intensity as earlier. "For my part, this is why I've kept it to myself. People looked at me…differently afterwards. I hate that look, Beckett. I didn't need their pity then, and I don't need yours now."

"Hush," she soothed. "It's not pity. Sympathy. Empathy. They're different, Rick. You know that better than most." Her partner just stared, frowning. Doubt was written into his tense upper half, but so was the longing to believe her. "You may not see it," the woman continued earnestly, "but building the life you have—atop something as horrible as that night? You're one of the least pitiable people I've ever met."

"I want to believe you."

"'Cause you're smarter than you look."

He lifted his eyebrows somewhat. "You're picking on me? Now? Maybe you could use a _little _pity."

"No," Kate replied quietly, but firmly. His tickle of humor couldn't dissuade the pervasive chill which threatened her core. "I can't think of you in that context—of pity. If I let that happen, I wouldn't know how to reconcile you with the man I agreed to marry. It's already…hard." There arose a glimmer of his original fear. "I'll deal with it," she assured him immediately, sternly. "And you'll give me time to do that."

"And now you're bossing me around?"

"Why would I stop?" she hummed with an uncertain smile. "You're less familiar now. Heavier than I thought. But you're not different. I was afraid you would turn out to be—that everything else was just an act you had decided to put on to keep people from really looking at you."

"Not quite. Sorry. I'm just as likely to fixate on your ass when you're filling out the murder board."

"Good," she blurted, but paused, blinking uncertainly.

A brief chuckled hummed in his throat.

"Good," Beckett repeated with an arching eyebrow. "But don't advertise it for Christ's sake."

"I remain the very soul of discretion."

Kate rolled her hazel eyes, but smiled somewhat. She gladly pressed into him when his lips touched at her forehead in a kiss. Both hands lifted upon his back, tracing nonsensical patterns. At length she stated, "I love you, damn it." Her grip tightens into a squeeze. "Who you are right now."

Her partner sighed with a hint of the peppermint candy that had arrived with their check at the diner earlier.

_Was that really only a couple hours ago?_

Castle drew back somewhat, skimmed a few rebellious curls at her brow in order to slide them behind her ear. The emotional toil exacted by their conversation is evident in the subtle deepening of lines about his eyes and mouth. He's still pale—that's likely just as much from the cold by now. Blue eyes still seem a shade or three darker than normal—that's not. "Let me take you home, Kate. There's nothing more for us here."

* * *

**A/N: My apologies for the delay, and if this chapter was a little rough. Flu = bad. But you guys still equal awesome for your interest. This may read as somewhat conclusive, but there are clearly still unanswered questions to address. I'll endeavor to present them more quickly.**


	6. Miles of Musing

Beckett drives them home. Not because her partner can't, but because there is nothing about anything he has revealed that she can spare him from. Likewise, she cannot undo not having asked about it sooner.

Such helplessness and shame haven't dogged her with such vigor since his number one fan dotted the 'I' on his Kevlar vest with a bullet. Castle might not have taken part in that case if she hadn't pushed him to do so—he hadn't wanted to tease her with being part of the scene when she couldn't actually work it with the rest of the precinct. Oh, he'd never said as much to her. There was no need. But she had been hungry for even a taste of the purpose and fulfillment that had been denied her by the Mayor's hiring freeze. And he'd been shot as a result.

They didn't talk about it. She because it hurt, he because to even address the matter would give it more credence than it deserves. The variables did not support her guilt. Gates would have called again. She would have explained the situation over the phone and Castle wouldn't have been able to say no after that. Not with hostages at stake; certainly not when including a nine-year-old girl. That hadn't made her feel better at the time. It still didn't.

Similarly, having once possessed seemingly good reasons for not looking too closely into Castle or his past did not excuse only now learning the terrible truths hidden therein. How many crime-scenes has she approached over the years, noticing as she did so how the rest of the world seemed content to obliviously go on about its business? How many interviews had revealed peripheral individuals hoarding the truth or the ability to have possibly prevented a murder who didn't because they hadn't cared, or weren't brave enough?

Turmoil is present within her. She is driving because she needs the control it alludes to. Yet this strife does not consume her. It is not allowed.

_Because, naughty girl, this is not about just you anymore_.

The sun shines on, uncaring and unheeding. Earth keeps turning. Several more inhabitants of the hamlet are visible in cars or walking huddled along the sidewalks—the ordinary bustle of everyday life. It is like steel wool upon her perceptions, made all the more sensitive from a scrape with horror.

"What happened to him?" she finally asks. "To Llewellyn." Part of her needs to know. Another part just wants to hear the other's voice, further proof that he is with her amidst this somewhat surreal day.

Castle's left hand is entwined with her right upon the console between them, both their pairs of gloves forsaken. One exploring digit slides along the web of skin between her index finger and thumb. "I wasn't the definition of a reliable witness. Frank Autry, the deputy in charge of the local substation at the time, was kind of a friend of the family. I suppose a lot of people could've said the same about the man. Uh, anyway…believe it or not there was a time I was known for _not_ making up stories. Mine was a very backwards mental development, I know." Beckett's lips purse in reply, but lack mirth. "I don't remember the conversation, but whatever I said was enough to send him and two more of his men looking for Llewellyn. They found him at the lake. He worked there during the summers as a life-guard."

Neither of them chooses to comment on the irony. It hangs in the sedan for a long, stifling moment. So does the subject preceding it: his time alone and adrift upon the ocean. Kate doesn't have it in her to push him on that issue. He asked for the space. She's relented—for better reasons this time, and only for now.

"I can almost see him," Beckett mused aloud. "I bet he acted like it was just another day."

"Yes," her partner replied quietly. Silence joined them again for another mile or so. Then he continued, "In the end he didn't deny what he'd done, never made a bid to escape justice. The court ruled he wasn't mentally fit to stand trial. He's been under state care since then. I presume that's still the case."

"Wow," Kate issued succinctly. It was a jaded expression of disappointment with the conclusion.

"I know, right? But remember: this was 1974. Hinckley hadn't even heard of Jodie Foster yet. The insanity defense wasn't unheard of, but it was even rarer than it is today. Back then the burden of proof for mental disease or defect was on the prosecution." The author moistened his lips and shifted somewhat restlessly in his seat. "I'm not sure it would have mattered either way. No one argued the decision, not even the families of the victims. Once he stopped trying to hide the truth from us it was obvious to everyone that Llewellyn was…broken."

"Broken," she scoffs quietly. "He's a fucking psychopath."

"I think they use 'sociopath' for him, though I guess that depends on who you ask. That night at the point I would've agreed with the former diagnosis. The things he said…he seemed unhinged in a way I still can't accurately describe. But it was his exceptional intelligence that set him apart, and a chilling absence of empathy which made him a monster. Transcripts from the trial read like something out of a horror story. Llewellyn always knew the consequences of his lies and the violence at the end. It just didn't matter. He never claimed to be superior—he wasn't a narcissist. He chose to hunt us because he _could_, first one way and then another. It wasn't wrong to his mind. No more wrong than when a cat toys with its prey before consuming it."

"Jesus," she whispered.

"That was the comparison he used in court."

"Yeah, well…I'm a dog person and proud of it."

Castle smiles briefly, nodding in mute agreement.

Kate allowed the conversation to lull. She didn't like hearing him talk about Llewellyn. An unsettling quiescence infused his voice, a subtle yielding of its standard depths in favor of a whispered, almost imperceptible yearning. Subtle, yes, but in the way that heat from a doorknob was indicative of a raging inferno on the other side. She knows the signs because a similar conflagration exists within her. It is no small part of what has always bound them to one another: macabre fascination. They both need to know the stories—the _why_ of it all. That bond has shifted and transformed, but always endured. It existed well before they were proposed husband and wife or even detective and consultant. Back when the connection was merely between an author and his devoted reader.

But Kate loves him now. She wants more for Rick than a lifetime spent exploring darkness. It's not that he can't handle it. It's that she doesn't want him to. She took an oath to carry the shield and protect New York City. He's poised to make a similar commitment to her, but that is not the same thing. One does not demand the other.

_It's our quintessential conundrum—wanting to protect each other from ourselves._

"Have you ever visited him?" She regretted the question immediately.

Her companion winced slightly, but his tone didn't indicate any animosity towards her for asking. "No. It's never crossed my mind as anything more than a passing thought. What would be the point?"

"I…I guess I don't know. Some form on conclusion maybe, if possible."

Rick's gaze seemed to bore right through her. His tone was cold, yet unsettlingly gentle. "You know as well as anyone: there's no sense of closure to be gleaned from a man who harbors no regrets." He looks away again, as if lending her privacy while she struggles to contain and conceal the impact of his words. "If some form of peace exists to be had, it waits to be discovered elsewhere. That being said," he added thoughtfully, "my answer would probably be different if it hadn't been for Laura. I'm not sure how to explain that better. Whatever she gave me at the time… Well, her legacy has endured long past a sadly brief lifespan."

Beckett didn't know what to say, what to offer that wouldn't come back at her in kind, and so made no reply. Once again she found herself brimming over with the impossible desire to have been there for him during that period of his life. The detective also yearned deeply for a glimpse of his former self, the carefree and life-loving Richard Rodgers. He is capable of that presently, of course, but now she knows it is not solely a viable trait of his personality. Castle also wields it as a proactive self-defense mechanism to keep people from seeing what he doesn't wish to be known.

_It kinda figures though, that an author of mysteries would turn out to be shrouded in them._

"If you get any heavier," her partner warned knowingly, "you're going to fall through the floorboards." The sideways look he was giving her only reinforced the words. He rightly suspected she was questioning him again. That was actually a curiously comforting detail. The driver wanted him to know she was unsettled, but it wasn't something she would be comfortable putting into words—probably the wrong ones.

"I warned you to stop feeding me so much," she quipped, only somewhat forcing the humor.

"You have to talk to me, Kate. I understand it might not be easy, but trust me: this is not something you want to leave to my imagination." There was that look again—the one that reminded her of Royce. A sad and certain expectation of the inevitable: in this case for her to leave him the way so many other people in his life had.

_Fat chance, babe._

"I'm still processing," Beckett informed him. "It's a lot to take in. Don't rush me." Hearing her commanding tone elicits a hesitant smile in her partner's stern countenance. "You know, I just realized there's a glaring omission in everything you've told me so far."

"The piano," Rick stated evenly.

Kate shifted in her seat, rattled by his intuition. _Never gonna get used to that. _"Yeah. That's what started all of this, but you haven't mentioned where it fits."

Castle sighed quietly, but his only answer was to face the road ahead as she turned onto his private road. It was paved, wide enough for two vehicles, and wound gently for a few hundred yards before the woods gave way to the open landscape upon which his beach house had been constructed.

"Home sweet home away from home," she breathes, which has become a ritual of sorts upon their arrival here.

"Oh good—you remembered to pack some poor grammar," he replied, which he usually did.

"I only wish it were summer." Her teeth chattered softly when she relaxed the muscles in her jaw. "You have the keys, right? 'Cause by this point my nipples could probably serve as makeshift glass cutters if we need to break in."

His expression sagged briefly in surprise, but quickly lit with barely contained amusement. "I don't believe you," he simpered. "Show me."

"No way," Beckett grumbles, sheltering her breasts with her hands, arms crossed defensively. "You know me," she accuses mildly. "I don't draw my weapons unless I'm prepared to use 'em."

They rose from the car as their repartee continued, which was quickly becoming less about distracting one another from their woes and gaining genuine humor and affection. Maybe she should be pressing him more aggressively for answers—certainly she had learned her lesson there. But it was so goddamn good to see him relinquish the burdens of the past and simply exist with her in a lighter present. Time seemed to be on their side for once. They had the whole weekend ahead. It was true what he'd said earlier: somehow she was able to unwittingly pull him away from all of that. Her fears about how he's different are not unfounded. _But look how wonderfully you remain the same_. This is no façade—no wall by which he keeps her at a distance. This is him lured out from behind those barriers by the desire to come play with her.

It is a deeply humbling thought, not an unpleasant ache and weight upon her heart.

"What's mine is yours, and yours mine," Castle reminded her, circling a finger in the air to indicate her chest.

"Oh yes," Beckett encouraged throatily with a dramatized version of an ecstatic eye-roll, "seduce me with your bastardizations of common law."

"No," he chided mildly. "I'm merely stating a happy truth. It's called sharing."

"Sharing," she repeated slowly, as if the word were utterly alien.

Blue eyes seemed to glimmer with unspoken laughter. "All the cool kids are doing it."

Kate set her features to broadcast consideration of his reply as they came together before the hood of his car. "Alas," she chirped at length, "I'm sworn to give myself only to someone who can defeat me in battle."

"Like Red Sonja," he gasped and leaned to one side as if likely to swoon. "God she was hot."

"Castle…" she began warningly.

"The way she handled that sword," he groaned blissfully. "So blatantly, yet splendidly phallic."

Beckett just glared.

"And her ultimate objective?" the author continued unabated. "To be the bearer of the Creator's glowing orb? I mean really. Damn." He slowed his speech to fully punctuate the words, "They have her…pursuing…balls. Well, just one really, but still. That's soooo shameless. Better still, her driving goal is to destroy it! She's literally a scantily clad, sword-waving, ball-buster. As a fellow writer, I'm horribly drawn to admiration for such bald contempt even as I despise it for a complete lack of subtlety." Despite the critique her fiancé was giddy with approval. "Whoever wrote that story clearly experienced a deeply conflicting relationship."

"One can only imagine what _that_ feels like," Beckett jabbed with a subtle lift of her eyebrows.

"Which part?" he parried with his trademark smirk. "So far the parallels are downright staggering."

Hazel eyes enlivened by the sun dipped pointedly between their bodies. Her hands lifted to his waist, playing at the edges of his unfastened coat. "Are you asking to see my sword play, Rick?"

He sniffed, lifted his chin. "I'm willing to settle for a glimpse of your glass-cutters. _I'm_ a gentleman."

"Wow," she blurted. "I…I can't think of a reply that doesn't involve farting noises."

Castle tipped his head back some, laughing aloud. "Oh goodness," he breathed at length, still quivering lightly. "You are _such_ a lady."

"Fuck yeah. I got class comin' outta my ass."

"You're a poet who doesn't know it," he added, less humored, more affectionate. By his expression and body-language she could tell her lover was only then realizing that they were having fun together. Today of all days. "My own walking, talking stick-woman," he declared as his smile slowly faded. The author reeled her in by her coat until the lines of their lower halves merged sublimely.

"Callin' me skinny?" she teased, but moistened her lips in mute invitation to his.

Attentive audience the man was; he needed no further prompting. The subtle shadow imposed by his height eclipses the sun as they ease in. An undercurrent of pleased anticipation quivers in her blood to feel the warmth of his breath, to be suffused by familiar scents and foreknowledge of the intimate texture of the oncoming kiss. All the details stood out to her at that moment, raw and affecting. They wound into her senses and straight down through her body to coil in her middle, destined to become an aroused blend of warmth and moisture.

Yet a jarring interruption ground them to a halt with a scant centimeter to spare between their mouths, a third voice which arose from close by. "Well, I see Valentine's Day weekend is off to a fine start here."

They turn in surprised unison to see Martha Rodgers standing in the opened doorway.

* * *

**A/N; You can say it. I'm a dink. Either for the unspeakable delay or the disturbingly Castle-esque interruption. I have no excuses for the former: life happens. Most frustrating. But it is not in my nature to leave a thing undone or half-assed, so anyone concerned about this remaining unfinished should rest easy. Easier. As to the latter...actually, I got nothing there either. I'm an unrepentant meanie. I will, however, offer some apology if their humor towards the end seems off-putting to some. You could call it one more manner of Beckett subconsciously exerting control by seducing Rick out of his slump, both physically and with humor. I prefer to think of it as that coupled with a healthy dose of giving a damn.**


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